Description: Lead by the U.S. military, a team of scientists
secretly travel into Red China to find the truth behind
rumors of a downed U.F.O. While enroute to the saucer's
hidden location, the Americans meet a group of Russian
scientists who are also searching for the spacecraft. The
two teams race against time to find the alien craft and its
promise of a fantastic jump in technology, while trying to
avoid the Red Chinese troops in the area. Television veteran
Frank Telford directed this action-packed science fiction
thriller with top-notch cinematography by the great Hal Mohr
(The Wild One,
Captain Blood). The stellar cast includes Dan
Duryea, Bob Hastings, Bernard Fox and James Hong.

The Film:

A veteran cast gives the 1968 cheapie The Bamboo Saucer what
little credibility it has. In his last role, Dan Duryea plays the head
man of an expeditionary force in search of a missing UFO. Since the
craft was last sighted in the mountains of Red China, the search takes
on political significance. Duryea's American team is eventually forced
to align itself with a similarly-purposed group of Soviet researchers
(this being a 1968 film, the real bad guys are the Red Chinese). Lois
Nettelton has some wonderfully campy moments as a Russian scientist.
Bamboo Saucer was produced by Jerry Fairbanks, of "Speaking of
Animals" and "Crusader Rabbit" fame.

Fred Norwood (Ericson) is a crack test pilot, flying the experimental
X-109 (actually footage of the F-104 Starfighter). He is buzzed and
chased by a glowing blue flying saucer. His radical maneuvering gets him
in hot water with his bosses on the ground. No one saw his flying
saucer. No radar blip either. He is scrubbed from the X-109 program as
unstable. Fred convinces his brother in law to let him use the laser
radar gizmo he's been working on to look for blips invisible to regular
radar. Eventually, one is found, but Joe goes up to check it out while
Fred sleeps. Joe's plane is broken up in the air. Fred tells FAA
investigators about his saucer.

Image : NOTE:The below
Blu-ray
captures were taken directly from the
Blu-ray
disc.

The
Bamboo Saucerhas a,
predictably, modest
Blu-ray
transfer
from Olive Films. The film's most amusing visual feature are
the poor effects and use of poor quality stock plane flight
footage. It is rife with damage where the rest of the film,
in 1080P, looks fairly clean. This
is only single-layered with a middling bitrate. Colors look
strong with nice hues and there are instances of depth and
reasonable detail. Frankly it looks far better than the film
deserves. The 1.78:1
Blu-ray
improved the presentation over an SD rendering and aside
from the stock footage - looks quite decent.

CLICK EACH BLU-RAY
CAPTURE TO SEE ALL IMAGES IN FULL 1920X1080 RESOLUTION

Damage example

Audio :

The DTS-HD mono track at
827 kbps
sounds a bit scattered. There is no depth or
range to speak of and the audio effects are only slightly superior to
the video effects.
Overall, it is fairly unremarkable with a bare couple of instances of
depth. There are no subtitles
and m

No supplements
- not even a trailer which is the bare-bones route that Olive are going
with almost all of their releases.

BOTTOM LINE: Wow - I haven't seen a film this... weak in a long while. I love
it! It is definitely of the variety of being so bad - it's
good - if you look at it in the right sense. None of the
stars can save this turkey's meager production values. What
gives it appeal are how bad the effects are. They are as
laughable as I've ever seen. The Olive
Blu-ray is bold (to even exist) but fans of schlock will have one of the
premium efforts in The Bamboo Saucer. Recommend to
those, like I, who love the imperfect science-fiction dregs
that surface from past decades. Everyone else should simply
smile and pass.

Gary Tooze

March 20th, 2014

About the Reviewer:
Hello, fellow Beavers! I have been interested in film
since I viewed a Chaplin festival on PBS when I was
around 9 years old. I credit DVD with expanding my
horizons to fill an almost ravenous desire to seek out
new film experiences. I currently own approximately 9500
DVDs and have reviewed over 5000 myself. I appreciate my
discussion Listserv for furthering my film
education and inspiring me to continue running DVDBeaver.
Plus a healthy thanks to those who donate and use our
Amazon links.

Although I never wanted to become one of those guys who
focused 'too much' on image and sound quality - I
find HD is swiftly pushing me in that direction.